my morning wishes

October 15, 2023 J.S. Legg

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, or sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Days”

New - Back in Print

Man and World in the Light of Anthroposophy
Stewart C. Easton

A sense of alienation and isolation is part of the experience of every modern person. Social and political life are governed by fear and uncertainty. People are strangers both to one another and to the world. Why are these conditions more acute now than ever before in history? What meaning can be found in our modern crises?

From the Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner

Christ and the Human Soul
The Meaning of Life – The Spiritual Foundation of Morality –
Anthroposophy and Christianity
10 Lectures in Copenhagen and Norrköping
May 23–30, 1912; July 12–16, 1914 (CW 155)
Translated by Agnes Schneeburg-de Steur

Now, we must keep before our mind’s eye what human beings are meant to become in their souls during the Earth evolution. The human being must become what may be denoted by the word “personality.” This personality requires, to begin with, what may be called free will; but it needs, at the same time, the possibility of finding within itself the way to the divine in the world. On the one side: free will, the possibility of choosing between the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil, the true and the false; on the other side: laying hold of the divine in such a way that it penetrates our soul and that we know ourselves to be inwardly filled with it. Free will on the one side, knowing ourselves to be filled with the divine on the other side—these are the two goals of the soul evolution of human beings on the earth. . .

—Rudolf Steiner, from a lecture of July 12, 1914, in Christ and the Human Soul (CW 155)